So I said I was gonna write about my backup attempt of my Zip discs. I tried doing this last week actually, but for some reason the Zip drive was not working and I was online with an Iomega customer service rep for a good hour doing troubleshooting. In the end, the drive still did not budge so I was asked to send it back in, and they replaced it for me. FOR FREE. 0_0 I had the drive for about ten years now and oddly enough, my warranty wasn’t dead yet. In case you’re wondering, the only reason why I’m doing this is because I have about 50+ Zip discs containing my design files from the dinosaur years and I must extract them so that I can bring them to the 21st century and file them safely into my external drive.
The goods. Almost like the Jaz drive setup, but I have 50+ discs to get to with this one!
Inserted the first disc and YES!!!! it worked beautifully. Plug and play, baby.
The thing with my Zip discs is that they contained a lot of old personal stuff. The very first digital photos that I took using one of those Sony Mavicas (which had a floppy disk drive built-in to save your images onto!!!) had been backed up into these discs around Y2K. But the critical data which I really wanted to get to was the project files of my very first websites, dating from 1995. Boy, they look like chit compared to today’s standard! Wow, the internet is already over ten years old? I can still remember very clearly when it was the new thing and we were all taught how to code HTML 1.0 during our senior year of design school. My, what a long way we’ve come. Talk to me about CSS or XHTML now and I’ll have a blank look on my face. I am a senior netizen with half a foot into the grave already.
Anyway, my stuff that’s been around for over ten years are still pretty intact (well, almost; I have many Director files— *.dcr format, which I am not able to open anymore). They are of no use to anyone including myself, but I am very relieved I was able to access these files because no matter what they are my legacy as a designer.
While we’re on this subject of technological evolution, I came across these last week and I really got quite a kick out of these two articles:
Where Are They Now? 25 Computer Products That Refuse to Die
http://tech.msn.com/howto/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=19017036>1=40000
Then and Now: A Fast-Forward Tour of Gadget History
http://technologizer.com/2009/02/24/then-and-now-a-fast-forward-tour-of-gadget-history/
CONCLUSION: Data extraction from Zip drive = SUCCESS!!! *yay*
It didn’t take me as long doing this (as compared to my papershredding adventure). I started around 5pm and finished by midnight. Not bad at all. Now, let’s not take over ten years again before I compile and backup my backup. ;)
